When hiding is lying…

I can not imagine there is even one single person can answer – no.We all lied or hid things with different reasons. Sometimes reason was to protect ourselves from bad outcome at work, or sometime just to look cool. Even there were times we told ourselves that we were doing it to not to hurt another person.

We all know that lying is bad. What about hiding? How big is the difference between hiding and lying?

At first sight, hiding seems very innocent in comparison to lying. If you have nothing to gain and your purpose is to protect the other person from pain or grief, then not telling is may be the right thing to do and therefore acceptable. For example, if a loved one has just died and a doctor tells a loved one that the person died quietly and without pain when in fact the doctor knows differently, it is probably the right thing for the doctor to have done. What if you have something to gain.. Might be love, attention, trust, time or only not to loose any of these.

Depending on the situation, not telling to truth or delaying it might make you liar as well. If your intention is to save yourself from trouble or grief over something you have done that you should not have done, or did not do that you should have done, then not telling is probably the same as lying. This is because your main purpose is to deceive. I believe that there is no big difference between lying and hiding the truth, if hidden stuff is something that person has to know because the outcome is the same regardless. It is taking your friend or loved one’s making decision based on right information away since they do not know whole situation correctly. They are completely or partially in the dark about it and it may be important – much more important than you think. Therefore do not decide for other people especially for the ones you care the most. Be open with them, let them decide how they want to proceed by knowing the whole situation although it is not in your favor. Especially when it comes to relationship; do not hide things which might have big effect on relationship future. It will come to light soon or later, and will leave you in more difficult situation than if you tell the truth in the beginning. It might even make you a liar.

If you find yourself preferring to hide something, you may feel like delaying it until the right opportunity to tell comes up. However, it is better to just get things out in the open from the beginning.